1. Field
Example embodiments relate to a flexible display. More particularly, example embodiments relate to a flexible display manufactured by scribing a flexible mother board into predetermined number of panels.
2. Description of the Related Art
A flat panel display includes a substrate and a display unit including a plurality of pixels formed on the substrate. The flat panel display may have a bending characteristic when the substrate is formed of a flexible material like a plastic film instead of a rigid material like glass. The flexible display device may be a liquid crystal display (LCD) or a self-emissive organic light emitting diode (OLED) display.
The flexible display device is manufactured through a process in which a plurality of display units and a plurality of thin film encapsulation layers are formed on a mother board, an upper protection film and a lower protection film are layered in the flexible mother board, and the mother board is separated to individual flexible display devices by cutting scribe lines between individual flexible display devices. The upper protection film, the lower protection film, and the flexible mother board are cut by putting strong pressure on the mother board using a cutting knife.
The strong pressure is applied as an impact to the flexible display device and, at the same time, a bending force is applied to the flexible display device during a cutting process. Thus, inorganic layers (such as a barrier layer, a buffer layer, and various insulating layers) close to the scribe lines are damaged, thereby causing cracks. The cracks generated in the inorganic layer are spread toward a thin film encapsulation layer during a post-process after the cutting, thereby causing panel shrinkage due to a loss of an encapsulation function of the thin film encapsulation layer.
The above information disclosed in this Background section is only for enhancement of understanding of the background of the invention and therefore it may contain information that does not form a prior art.